If At First You Don’t Succeed, Increase the Degree of Difficulty

A week to the day after having fallen one hide sort of reaching a Nose Work 3 Elite title, Logan and I had gone a couple of hundred miles south to Flemington, N.J. I had considered not going given that the forecast was calling for even higher temperatures than what we struggled through the week before in Huntington, Mass.

But as noted before, NW3 trial spots can be hard to come by, so I figured I would be fool to pass this one up. Coincidentally, when checking my email early on the morning of the Flemington trial, I learned we had been drawn for a spot in a trial in September in Pennsylvania. It was a luxury to know whatever happened on this day in New Jersey, Logan and I would have another opportunity in two months.

We started our day with vehicles. It was already pretty warm, and Logan was showing it. It wasn’t our most graceful search, but he found one hide and didn’t give me any other indication. As it turned out he was right.

On to interiors and out of the heat. That seemed to rejuvenate Logan as he showed good energy, finding three hides in the first room, one the second, and two in the third.

We caught a big break when it came time for the exterior. A rare instance where we could go off leash. Considering this was in a grassy area, I knew there was a risk of not being able to stop Logan in case he wanted to mark. But given the heat, and how much better he does searching off leash, I rolled the dice. He found all three hides in less than a minute.

Then came the grand finale… containers. Seven days earlier, it was the search element were Logan only found one of two hides, and I had elected not to send him back to double check the containers. It seemed to take Logan a little longer than usual, but he found a hide in a container resembling the one he did not alert on the week before. I opted to take him back to some other containers were he had shown some interest.

As he stood over one container there was a sudden noise in the room that got his attention. At that point the 30-second warning was called and I opted to call “finish.”  I was told at the end of the day, a few dogs had false alerted on the bag Logan was showing interest on prior to being distracted. Who ever made that noise, thank you. It helped us get that third and final NW3 title.